2012 — 29 July: Sunday
A nice, sunny morning1 and a nice hot cuppa to kick off the second half of this weekend.
It used to be said that lightning never strikes in the same place twice (demonstrably untrue, of course). Indeed, Charles Proteus Steinmetz used to joke that it was because there wasn't anything there to be struck. What I'd like to know is why does a horsefly bite the same bit of skin as its distant cousin nibbled last month? Provoking further irritation. On that front, the BBC has just promised me that I "need never miss a minute of the Olympics". Is that so? What Olympics?
I can still remember...
... the irritation I felt that my specifically-requested Christmas present of 1964 — the 11th edition of the Guinness Book of Records — was cluttered up with results from the Tokyo Olympics. It remains the only bit I haven't read. I have read every other book I still have from that year. The (only) book of poetry, notice, was Christa's, on the grounds that she'd bought it in 1964 after her year in Gothenburg, Nebraska as an exchange student:
Aldiss, Brian W More Penguin SF 12, incl 'Monkey wrench', 'Jokester', & 'Tunnel under world' Anth (SF) Aldiss, Brian W Penguin SF 12, incl 'Grandpa', 'Nightfall' & 'Track 12' Anth (SF) Amis, Kingsley; Conquest, R Spectrum 1 10, incl 'By his bootstraps', 'Midas Plague', 'Null-P' Anth (SF) Asimov, Isaac Hugo winners 9, incl 'Allamagoosa', 'The Star', 'Flowers for Algernon' Anth (SF) Bleiler, F; Dikty, TE Imagination Unlimited 6, incl 'What dead men tell', 'Old Faithful' Anth (SF) Derleth, August Beachheads in space 7, incl 'Metamorphosite', 'Repetition' Anth (SF) Harrison, Harry Deathworld Planet Pyrrus even showed up in comix form in 1960s Novel (SF) Nourse, Alan E Beyond infinity 9, including 'PRoblem', 'Coffin cure', 'Family resemblance' Coll (SF) Punch Punch for June 1860: Vol 38 Gift from Aunty Peg Henson Funny (F) Silverberg, Robert We, the marauders Space hijacking Novel (SF) Tosswill, TD Seven Romantic poets Blake, Burns, Byron, Shelley, Keats, Coleridge, Wordsworth Poetry Wouk, Herman Caine Mutiny Willie Keith's unheroic exploits in WWII Pacific arena Thriller Wyndham, John Midwich cuckoos Filmed as 'Village of the Damned' Novel (SF) Wyndham, John Seeds of time 10, including 'Pawley's peepholes' Coll (SF) Wyndham, John Trouble with lichen What happens when you can arrest ageing process Novel (SF)
There's an excellent essay by Anne Fadiman on "Merging Libraries" in her collection Ex Libris. Click the pic to see what sort of gal Ms Fadiman is...
Mind you, she completely fails to cover the situation where one of the bibliophiles doing the merging goes and dies, most inconsiderately. [<Sigh>] Breakfast beckons.
Having started...
... defrosting some sausages I intend to have for lunch, I noticed (not actually for the first time) an (opened) bottle of Thousand Island salad dressing in the door of the fridge. It's now on the condemned list, alas. "Best before 05.2008" and "Once opened, consume within six weeks". I may yet take a closer look at that little tub of brandy butter, too, since I can't remember which Christmas it dates back to. Fair enough?
Domestic god, that's me. Sorry, Christa! :-)
I know very few of these Glaswegian(?) performers, but the sampler album is available as a free download from Amazon until the end of the month.
Low risk, in my opinion.
It wasn't until...
... page 174 of the well-written Scrivener manual (which, by the way carries the wrong running heading at that point) that I first felt I'd been subtly insulted. By Sylvia Plath, no less:
Offhand, I can think of many things that stink worse. Perhaps she meant "unpublishable"? And the frisson from that word "Distilling" comes from shuddery reminders of various personal encounters more than two decades ago — the scars have faded — with Adobe's Acrobat product.
I've just heard 'Huey' say "re-instate it again" when he meant "say it again".
Blue sky and...
... fluffy white clouds are once again the order of the evening (it's 19:54) and the thunder showers seem to have passed. Time for an early supper cuppa, perhaps?